It is usually desirable for a young child to eat at a table at which adults are dining in order to permit one of the adults to assist the child in the eating process, as well as to facilitate the development by the child of socially proper eating habits. While conventional, floor-supported infant chairs, or "high chairs", are of course well known, such chairs do not in fact permit the child to actually dine at the dining table with the adults due to the fact that the elevated seat structure cannot be accommodated beneath the dining table. Consequently, the child does not in fact dine at the dining table with the adults, but only within the vicinity of the table. As a result, proper assistance and instruction for the child is not conveniently administered.
Other infant chairs have of course also been marketed within recent years in order to overcome the aforementioned disadvantages of conventional "high-chairs", and it is particularly noted that one general type of such improved infant chairs is able to be self-supporting from the dining table edge surfaces in a cantilevered manner. As a result of such structure, the child is able to be ideally positioned relative to the dining table in order to facilitate the eating process of the child in a manner quite similar to the eating process performed by the dining adults. Proper development of the socially acceptable dining habits is also of course enhanced.
Such self-supporting chairs usually comprise an upper set of laterally spaced arms, and a lower set of one or more arms which cooperate with the upper set of arms so as to define therebetween a channel into which a projecting edge portion of the dining table is disposed. In this manner, the table surface defines the sole supporting structure for the chair which is, in turn, supported from the dining table in, in effect, a cantilevered manner.
A serious disadvantage of the aforenoted type of self-supporting infant chairs has proven to be the manner in which the support arms are secured to or within the chairs. In such conventional chairs, the arms are often secured to the chair structures simply by means of nut-and-bolt assemblages, wing nut-and-bolt assemblages, and the like. Experience has proven that with usage over extended periods of time, the nut-and-bolt assemblages tend to loosen as the various weight forces and bending moments are impressed thereon, the nuts become lost, and the bolts withdraw. The assemblages are therefore no longer rigidified, and consequently, they become unsafe for the infact child in view of the obvious fact that the chair structures are self-supporting, that is, the originally rigidified structure is the only means whereby the chairs are capable of being supported upon or from the dining tables. The resulting non-rigidified structures obviously can no longer support the loads impressed thereon by means of the infant child's weight, and thus, such structures become dangerous in use and must prudently be avoided and discarded.
In a similar manner, another type of conventional self-supporting infant table chair has the arms thereof secured within the chair framework simply by means of a slidable, friction-type fitting. This mode of securing the arms within the chair framework, however, has likewise proven unsatisfactory in view of the fact that with continued usage over a substantial period of time, the support arms have likewise withdrawn from the support socket structures due to the various stress and weight forces, bending moments, and the like, being impressed thereon. Consequently, such chairs have similarly become dangerous in usage, and must therefore have been avoided or discarded.